Our South
African Boer Cousins 3
by Albert Russo
While I was still dreaming
of a white Christmas - how can that happen when
you’re in South Africa, where December is
Summer and sizzling? - my burrah cousins were
already tending to their animals, filling up
their mangers, delivering a calf or giving drugs
to those who caught a virus, a bad cold or had
diarrhea - what a word! And when it gets real bad,
how do you write it? Diaarrrhhheeooaa?
Before you even finish saying this you’re
drained, inside out, specially inside. Apparently
mad cow disease hasn't gotten here yet. It's
enough that the country has the highest rate of
HIV in the world. Before President Zumba took
office, the Minister of Health claimed that you
could get rid of AIDS by eating beetroot and
garlic. How thtoopid can one be, and
criminal too, coz people believed it and many
patients died, listening to that bunk.
Everywhere you turn here
there's a puff of dung mixed with that of straw
and burnt feathers. So much so that, in the
beginning, I kept smelling my armpits, thinking I
was the one having BO, and spreading it around me.
But no matter how many times you shower, the
smell remains, you'd think that even the soap is
made out of it. I oughta launch a new sustainable
perfume and call it 'Dung'o feathers' for all of
them nature lovers fed up with their polluted
city life.
Between meals Kif kept
chomping on something that was dark red and
stringy. When I asked him if he was chewing gum,
he guffawed and minutes later he came back from
the pantry with what I believed was a piece of
bark. He then handed it to me and said:
“This is the best lekker
biltong you will find in the country, we
make it right here at home, using the finest rump
beef. After you get all the blood out, you cure
and smoke it and then let it dry for at least
three days, sometimes even a whole week. Come on,
taste it and tell me what you think.”
It looked a bit disgusting
to me, specially after his explanation. I
hesitated for a while then started munching on it
very slowly, and the more I munched, the more I
liked the stuff, tough and stringy as it was. You
have that spicy taste of dry meat lingering at
the back of your tongue, yet, at the same time
you get addicted to it and keep chewing cowwise
like there's no tomorrow, which gets on your
bloomin' nerves, so much so that I felt like
pinching my uncle every now and then, as a
preventive measure, coz he always eventually
comes out with some cocky bulldog story
that drives me up the wall.
Pharmacists all over the
world oughta sell biltong to all and
sundry fatsos, on account that you can chew the
same piece of meat all day long and have the
impreshun you've had a good and lasting meal,
sans the calories.
From
the GOSH ZAPINETTE! series (15 episodes in all),
by Albert Russo.
13/9//21 Excerpted from Zulu Zapy wins the
Rainbow Nation
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